Episodes

The buzz: HR – There’s an app for that. Just six years after first-generation iPhones debuted, smartphones pervade every corner of our work, personal, and emotional lives. As demand for corporate mobile apps escalates, HR is climbing aboard the mobility bandwagon. But with only a few developers offering mobile HCM – most limited to slim, basic process steps – HR is not finding the easy-to-use functionality and consumer-centric, gamified look-and-feel needed to engage younger employees. How soon ...

The buzz: Banking.Triggered by the financial crisis and subsequent regulatory changes, banks are moving toward a new paradigm of simultaneously and proactively managing risk

The buzz: Retail.Retailers: If you’re not making each customer’s experience more engaging, exciting and fulfilling than your competitors are, help is here. Hints: Find your own retail niche. Leverage that distinction across your business.

The buzz: Retail.As NY Fashion Week ends, fashion retailers are under more competitive pressure than ever to deliver great “retail therapy” experiences that consistently meet or exceed customers’ expectations.

The buzz: Pharma.Populations are aging. Chronic diseases are increasing, with new strains emerging at an alarming rate.

The buzz: Balance. Whether you call it work-life balance or integration, some days it seems impossible. How can you be calm, centered, productive, happy amid 24/7 work distractions and deadlines, family and sleep demands? The experts speak. Pamela Weiss, Appropriate Response: “In a real sense all life is inter-related. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” (Dr. Martin Luther King). Marc Le...

The buzz: Cloud and Marketing. Breaking news! The cloud brings one of the biggest opportunities for the future of marketing. But it comes with big challenges. Have you begun developing a digital marketing strategy and platform makeover? Are you prepared to shift into a totally customer-focused culture? Is the right talent on board yet? Before your marketing organization can play well and win big in this burgeoning arena, you need to know what future success will look like. The experts speak. Flo...

The buzz: Fraud.As hard as you work to implement effective anti-fraud processes, voracious and savvy fraudsters are working even harder

Today’s buzz: Insurance. Along its paper-to-digital journey, the insurance industry has attained sophistication in the use of some analytics tools. But the industry overall is still a laggard when it comes to adopting an integrated approach across the enterprise. The best way to catch up? Establishing a Business Intelligence Center of Excellence may be the key to creating a much-needed business-driven analytics strategy. The experts speak. Michael John Bernaski, Management Consultant: “...in an ...

The buzz: SMEs. If you’re the entrepreneurial founder or leader of a small-to-midsize company, your commitment is tested daily. After engaging investors and building a core team, your challenges can include scaling technology, opening sustainable distribution channels, engaging and delighting customers, mastering social media opportunities and more. Whew! How are today’s successful businesses getting it all done? The experts speak. Brian Moran, Brian Moran & Associates: “Never let the odds keep ...

Today’s buzz: Customer experience. Is technology the magic bullet to help you give customers everything they want and more – and thus ensure their loyalty? Not quite. Technology can indeed give you real-time insights to be relevant, to respond with agility and speed, to connect collaboratively and transact efficiently. But the perfectly seamless, frictionless customer experience can be elusive. The experts speak. Don Peppers, Peppers & Rogers Group: “Statistics show that customer loyalty is not ...

Today’s buzz: Potential Is your company still operating by Industrial Era standardization, predictability, top-down authority? Enough! Progressive organizations are using a connected, collaborative, creative model to unleash and amplify the imagination, initiative, passion of inspired individual employees, customers, suppliers. How? The experts speak. Polly LaBarre, MIX: “Every great advance has issued from a new audacity of imagination” (John Dewey). Andrew Jones, Conjunctured Coworking: “In to...

Today’s buzz: You - again! Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, 1849). Early-days “Make for Me” industrialization was humming along until Henry Ford car-jacked it to launch the “Any color you want, as long as it’s black” mass-production manufacturing economy. Today, consumers are once again calling the shots, loudly clamoring for “Make for Me” products and services. All at higher quality at lower prices, of course. Can new technologies help your company give ‘em...

The buzz: 4th Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Age of the Smart Factory, where a new generation of systems delivers real-time awareness and dynamic interactions among machines, systems, assets, people and things – aka The Internet of Things. Consumers are connected through sensors and smart tags. Printing is now 3D. Is your business ready to seize innovative opportunities or are you stuck in the dark ages? The experts speak. Dave Westrom, ThingWorx: “It is not the strongest or the most inte...

The buzz: Mentoring. Basic mentoring involves a more experienced or knowledgeable person guiding someone less experienced or knowledgeable for personal or professional development. Time for a pop quiz: Is your company allowing mentors for a privileged few, perhaps mostly males, or for a broader employee population? Are your mentoring practices building a diverse leadership or merely cloning stereotypes? A lot to consider. The experts speak. Sherryanne Meyer, Air Products and Chemicals: “The true...

Today’s buzz: Customer experience. Is technology the magic bullet to help you give customers everything they want and more – and thus ensure their loyalty? Not quite. Technology can indeed give you real-time insights to be relevant, to respond with agility and speed, to connect collaboratively and transact efficiently. But the perfectly seamless, frictionless customer experience can be elusive. The experts speak. Don Peppers, Peppers & Rogers Group: “Statistics show that customer loyalty is not ...

Today’s buzz: Simplification. Complexity is intensifying for businesses, communities and us as individuals. Is this what we really want or need? If the complexity trend perpetuates in established companies, at risk are the agility, adaptability, scalability, and cost-effectiveness that allow leaner, simpler organizations to compete better and win bigger. Before you try to recapture your long-gone simplicity via new organizational design, technology tools and business processes, first figure out ...

The buzz: Thinking. Increasingly, in-demand jobs require proficiency in critical thinking. Without it, how can a company validate the information it uses for decision making? Think about it. The experts speak. Dr. Mark Battersby, Professor: “Learning to think more critically involves developing practices that lead to more carefully thought-out, evidence-based decisions and judgments.” Dr. Sharon Bailin, Professor: “Critical thinkers are more committed to the process of being reasonable than to a...

Today’s buzz: Marketing. We’re all bombarded by a never-ending deluge of marketing content that rarely works its intended magic. If you're among the thousands of marketing writers spewing the reams of boring, forgettable content that’s likely harming your brand, it's time to get help. Listen-up for insider tips that can help boost your messaging to memorable, experience-rich, relevant, actionable communication gems. The experts speak. Jeremy Epstein, Sprinklr: “I’ve learned that people will forg...

The buzz: Fraud. As hard as you try to implement effective anti-fraud processes and tools, fraudsters work harder. Take heart! Predictive analytics technology can help you understand emerging fraud patterns and adapt against new types of attack. The tools continue to advance, but is your management team making analytics – and their insights – a high enough priority? The experts speak. Derek Snaidauf, Deloitte: “There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long...

The buzz: Manufacturing. Manufacturers are pushing automated processes into overdrive to survive in the global marketplace. As this evolution spawns new jobs demanding specialized skills best performed by robots, will the factory workforce need humans? The experts speak. Mike Yost, MESA International: “Governmental initiatives, like Germany’s ‘Industry 4.0’ and US National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, are shining a light on the importance of advanced technologies in manufacturing, but w...

The buzz: Game on! Games are an integral part of all societies. A formalized expression of play, games carry the ideas and behaviors of a culture through time to future generations (Wikipedia.org). But while we thought they it just for fun, the concept of games was maturing into a serious player in the diverse arenas of formal learning, job training, workplace productivity, sustainability, healthcare, advertising and sales. We’ve even heard that 70% of the top 2000 companies plan to use gamifica...

Today’s buzz: SMEs. If you’re the entrepreneurial founder or leader of a small-to-midsize company, you likely face challenges that test your commitment every day. Once you get past grappling with financing and building a leadership team, you need to focus on scaling technology, opening sustainable channels of distribution, engaging new customers, mastering social media opportunities and more. Ready to hear how successful businesses are figuring it all out? The experts speak. Brian Moran, Brian M...

Today’s buzz: Data overwhelm. What’s the big deal about big data when it comes to marketing your products and services? Successful marketing hinges on gaining insight from the mountains of data you capture and store, so you can build great relationships and experiences with your customers and prospects. Do you have the right people and tools to sift through all that information and find the golden nuggets of opportunity? The experts speak. Andrew Jones, Altimeter Group: “Customer identity today ...